On... Fossil Detectives

Fossil Detectives, BBC4, Thursdays, 19.30. 

Fossil Detectives comes from the serious but low-budget end of BBC tv's science output - presenter (the excellent Dr Hermione Cockburn), location, simple graphics, interview with expert, that's it. Not that this is a bad thing as it leaves plenty of space for science content. In the two episodes broadcast so far we have had a good basic introduction to the formation of fossils, places they can be found, and of both modern and historic interpretations of fossil evidence. 

Both episodes have also included interviews with David Attenborough (future episodes will feature interviews with musicians and fossil fans Billy Bragg and Alex James). These possibly sit slightly oddly within the style of the rest of the programme and perhaps could have been made into a stand alone programme of their own. This is not to say that the interviews have been uninteresting in any way. David Attenborough is always good value and here he is talking about one of his childhood passions, fossil collecting. 

Less spectacular than Earth: the Power of the Planet (currently getting a re-run), Fossil Detectives is nonetheless an informative and intelligent yet still accessible series. I look forward to the remaining six episodes and hope for an eventual repeat on BBC2 which should bring it to a wider audience.

http://www.open2.net/fossildetectives/

image: http://www.open2.net/open2static/source/file/root/62/31/255984/londoncpal_rhs.jpg

On... Dr Who season finales

Well, series 4 of Dr Who has now finished, the Earth has been restored to its rightful place in the cosmos and Rose has been sent back to her parallel universe with a sort-of duplicate Doctor for company. All enjoyable enough but am I alone in feeling a little disappointed by the series finale stories this year (Davros) and last (The Master)? They have been exciting roller-coaster rides, yes, pleasing in a superficial sort of way but with no great depth to them when compared to most of the other stories in their respective series.

Last year we had John Simm as The Master, brilliant, psychotic and sympathetic in turns. However we also lumbered with daft a plot involving his total take-over of the planet being undone by some rolling back of time and resetting reality shenanigans (if it is possible here, why not in every story when something goes wrong?), the doctor getting reduced to a goblin in a birdcage (but then restored by some some intricate but not-particularly-believable-if-you-thought-about-it-for-more-than-a-few-seconds plot device), and Martha morphing from an interesting and intelligent - if slightly lovelorn - companion into some sort of super freedom fighter simply to serve that self-same not-particularly-believable plot device. We are left with this two-dimensional Martha in series 4 working for UNIT. Now, as I remember it (and I may be wrong as I have not seen the stories since they were originally broadcast) the UNIT of the 1970's took on the enemies of Earth armed with nothing more than the Brigadier's pistol and stiff upper lip, certainly not doomsday devices and a teleports. And don't even get me started on the flying aircraft carrier thing lifted straight out of Captain Scarlet. Flying, I might add, without any resort to the laws of physics or indeed actual necessity to the plot.

This time around we had an enjoyably deranged Davros with aspirations not for the conquest of the cosmos, but its complete destruction. Why the Supreme Dalek, who seems to be sufficiently in charge to keep Davros locked in the basement, would want to go along with a plan which would deprive the Dalek race of anything to conquer and feel superior to is not explored. Nor, for that matter, is the Torchwood time bubble which conveniently saves Gwen and Ianto, or why Jackie (who has a new baby let us not forget) should decide to accompany Rose on a near suicide mission, or how Rose can jump between the parallel universes at will for three episodes when we were previously told this could on no account happen, or indeed why Rose gets sent back to the parallel universe but Mickey gets to stay in ours? Yes I know Russell T Davies wanted to pack in as many characters as possible into his last Dr Who story, that he has left a set-up for a possible Sarah-Jane style reappearance of Rose and the copy Doctor in, say, ten years time, that Micky might end up joining Torchwood, but these things had no proper logic within the story as presented to us on screen.

At its best, Doctor Who can provide intelligent, thought provoking entertainment and I suppose that some of the stories which I grew up with may well have seemed as daft to an adult then as some of today's do to me. My children have now watched the finale three times without once complaining about holes in the plot big enough to drive a stolen planet through. To them, it's just about the best thing on the telly. Mostly, they're right, but I just wish the finales could be add a little more substance to their undoubted style.

On...Installing Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron”

The download from Canonical only took about an hour – not bad considering it was completed within two hours of “Heron” being released.

I had already prepared the computer as best I could, defragmenting my Windows partitions to create a good contiguous free area on the hard drive (this was to be an install on a computer without Ubuntu already on it, I have “Gusty Gibbon” on another computer). Burned the live cd, popped it in and Ubuntu booted up. Went to the install option, and that is where the problems began. The system froze at the partitioning stage. Powered off, back into Windows to check everything still OK (it was) and decided to load from within Windows using the Wubi installer instead (avoiding the need to partition the drive). That worked well apart from one thing - the maximum resolution I could get was 800 x 600.

I therefore tried a normal install again. This time it worked fine and I created a new 20Gb partition and installed “Heron” to it, but with no change to the resolution. I then went back into Windows and removed the Wubi installation. Back to Ubuntu and tried to max out the visual effects setting which prompted the download of a driver which I hoped would cure things but actually made them worse, I was now down to 640 x 480!

I had previously used a “Gutsy” live cd in this computer to partition the drive and remembered getting a very high resolution, so I tried that next, hoping that installing “Gutsy”, getting the settings right and then hitting the “upgrade to 8.04” button would solve the problem. Took a very deep breath and crossed my fingers as the partitioner on the “Gusty” live cd is a bit more basic that that on the “Heron” one, and my choices were “use entire hard drive” and nuke all my data (obviously not a good idea) or use the rather unfriendly manual partitioner. Eventually managed to overwrite the “Heron” partition, and install “Gutsy” without any disasters. This worked fine, the resolution was actually too high now however when I set the visual effects to “extra” (and the system downloaded the new driver) it dropped to a comfortable level of 1024 x 768.

Hit the “upgrade to 8.04” button and after a longish wait – it worked! Bit of a struggle, but worth it in the end. No idea why I had all the screen resolution problems though.

On... Getting Things Done

Getting Things Gone (GTD) is a great concept - who wouldn't want to be more efficient? - but as the GTD movement expands into an industry, far, far too much time can be wasted messing about with different GTD systems or trying out GTD spreadsheets or applications, rather defeating the original purpose! Having just reviewed a number of GTD blogs and watching GTD videos on YouTube, I find myself left with additional decisions to make (which, if any, of the ideas do I adopt?) and a good deal of time has passed without actually doing anything constructive.

So, for what it's worth (and remembering that what works for one person won't for another depending on personality, needs and technology available) here are some GTD methods I use:

1) e-mail. I try to clear my work e-mail every day so my in-box is empty . I check it mid-morning and again mid- afternoon. Anything that can't be dealt with there and then gets printed off and put in my physical in-tray (usually only one or two items a day). At the end of the day all the read/actioned e-mail is moved to a separate folder for archiving (I periodically delete anything over 6 months old from this folder). Clearing out all the day's actioned e-mails in one go is very satisfying.

2) text messages – it is almost always faster to reply to a text message with a phone call / voice mail than to try to send a text back – phone keyboards were not designed to type on!

3) telephone calls and messages and voice mail – I write the initials of the caller and notes in an A5 spiral-bound notebook as I am listening. If the task can be dealt with there and then it is and the entry is crossed out. If not it is left until dealt with and then crossed out. At the end of the day any a line is (literally) drawn in the book and any items not actioned are carried forward to the next day – a good incentive to get them all done during the day. The book is also a useful archive of work done.

4) diary – I do not use an electronic diary any more, a paper diary has the advantage that you can stuff outstanding work into it.

5) be fanatical about organising the files on your hard drive, don't let the computer do it for you. What I aim for is to be easily able to find a specific file by using a logical hierarchical system, and also to be able to identify the contents of the file from its name (and I don't rely on indexing programmes, they encourage messiness).

6) be as computer / operating system / program neutral as possible. It was painful experience when Quicken withdrew from the UK market – I had several years of financial data in a program I assumed would be supported indefinitely. To maximise future proofing, I try to keep important documents in open formats if possible (even if it is just a pdf).

7) don't skip lunch – output increases when you have had food and a break from your desk.

8) make your GTD system as simple as possible!


And in the spirit of simplicity I will give just one link:
http://zenhabits.net/


(Thoreau said 'Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes' – perhaps now we should 'Distrust any enterprise that requires a new GTD system').

On... Windows, Ubuntu Linux and becoming O/S neutral

Like most people I have used Microsoft Windows for years and am very familiar with it, however Windows is by no means an ideal operating system – it is sluggish, greedy in using system capacity and insecure. From power-up, my XP pc takes a good ten minutes before you can do anything useful (during which time the hard drive sounds like a mosquito on caffeine), this does not include the time taken to run anti-virus and anti-spyware scans which slow performance dreadfully if run in the background. I know things would improve if I formatted the C drive and reinstalled XP, but having done this before I know it is an all day job and will not prove to be a panacea. I am not even going to attempt to load Vista, although my pc exceeds the minimum specification the experiences of others lead me to suspect it would run about as swiftly as a snail in wet tar. My laptop, also XP, is a little older but is kept deliberately free of all but essential software and performs somewhat better as a result.

So, a few months ago. I decided to take the first steps along the path to becoming OS neutral and loaded Ubuntu onto the laptop. Initially, I found things a bit difficult. The version at the time (Feisty Fawn I think) worked OK for surfing the web and word processing, but seemed a bit tricky to get to grips with and to be honest, I didn't use it much. However all that changed when the current (Gutsy Gibbon) Ubuntu release came out. This is much more intuitive and (crucially) it makes it easy to open documents stored on both of the laptop's Windows partitions, something I never managed under the previous release. My children have no problems using Ubuntu at all and it has recognised every usb device I have tried with it so far.

Not everything in Gutsy was easy though, at first I just could not figure out how to load new software. Being a Windows user I was used to downloading from the internet and running the installer but his didn't seem to work with Ubuntu. Eventually it dawned on me that the Synaptic Package Manager and the add/remove utility actually makes the job a lot easier than the Windows method (OK, I know I should have looked at the help files, but it never occurred to me that anything other than the Windows style method would work. “Assume nothing, young Grasshopper” as a wise man may once have said). You have a list of hundreds of applications, you tick the ones you want to add or remove and let Ubuntu get on with it. Simple as that. I have now loaded one program not listed in the package manager and that was tricky, but a bit of Googleing and trial and error got me through eventually. This is an area which could do with attention in future releases, if you have to open the Terminal to enter commands then most general users (myself included) are going to be put off. Otherwise installing is a breeze.

Playing mp3s and dvds is a better under Gutsy than Feisty, but I would suggest adding the VLC player (using the package manager) which copes with just about anything you throw at it (I use it on Windows too). Open Office is great, on the Windows side I use it and Microsoft Office 2003 pretty much interchangeably and I certainly will not be getting Microsoft Office 2007, anybody tempted to download a dodgy copy of the Microsoft product really now has no excuse, download a legitimate copy of Open Office instead, it's free (and guilt free too).

Overall, I currently use XP and Ubuntu about the same amount. You can't get Photoshop or i-Tunes on Ubuntu and video editing is under-supported at present, but for most Windows software there is a (usually free) linux alternative. And with new versions of Ubuntu released every few months (Hardy Heron – where do they come up with these names? * - is out next month) Ubuntu is rapidly becoming a polished OS. It is compact, very stable, runs fine of old underpowered systems, and (at least from Gutsy Gibbon) much easier to get to grips with than I expected. So, two operating systems down, only Mac OSX to go...

www.ubuntu.com

www.openoffice.org

www.freshubuntu.org


* suggested names for future distributions
Bloated Bill – buggy version to make Microsoft users feel at home
Slick Steve – polished but slightly pricey version aimed at Mac users
Obscure Ocelot – Terminal-only version for those die-hards who believe anyone who needs a graphical user interface is unworthy to use Linux
Colourful Chameleon – Ubuntu without the brown theme

On...Cold Showers

It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was January and after the excesses of Christmas thoughts naturally turn to taking exercise, eating more healthily and generally finding something to feel smug about.

I considered going to bed early in order to get up at the crack of dawn to do a bit of work before breakfast. I then realised that dawn was actually some time after I normally drag myself out of bed anyway and I would therefore actually be having a lie-in. And then it happened, I was innocently watching Countryfile when Michaela Strachen comes on doing an investigation of the 'benefits' of cold water swimming. Stimulates the immune system apparently. Well the Council swimming pool does do a pretty good impression of the average winter water temperature of the sea or a lake but was it possible to investigate the physiological effects closer to home?

Cold water cures were fashionable in Victorian times. Charles Darwin, looking for a cure to the chronic illness from which he suffered following his voyage on the Beagle, undertook a regime of cold showers and being wrapped, mummy-like, in wet sheets. His children would apparently stand outside his shower room in the garden 'listening to his groans' (1). So, following Darwin's example (not that I have any mysterious tropical diseases as far as I am aware) I decided to try cold showers. I could test my physiological reactions to cold water with minimal time an effort but still start off with a nice warm shower, only switching on the cold on after I had washed in comfort.

And so the experiments began. It takes my shower about five seconds to go from hot to cold during which time the brain registers (a) 'all OK', (b) 'nothing wrong with an little bit of cold water, never did anyone any harm, what's all the fuss about anyway', to (c) '****!, that's freezing' On day one I managed a not particularly impressive brisk count to five, accompanied by various involuntary noises, before I switched off. In the aftermath a slightly elated feeling was noted. In subsequent days I managed to count to five more slowly, eventually managing rather longer periods. The need to vocalize and the post-dousing elation remained.

The vocalizations are probably linked to the hyperventilation reaction of the human body when immersed in very cold water. It is this involuntary rapid breathing (Countryfile explained) which can easily lead to drowning (and a good reason to experiment in the shower if you ask me). Although not hyperventilating, I was certainly breathing more oxygen in as the cold water hit me, the urge to vocalize is possibly part of a coping mechanism akin to swearing when you stub you toe, it distracts you a little from the pain. The post shower high may be linked to to release of 'feelgood' chemicals by the brain in response to the physical stress on the body.

Although never actually pleasant, the experience became more tolerable after a few days. Interestingly, standing absolutely still with the water hitting the back of your neck and running down the middle of your back feels much less cold than if the water lands on your shoulders or front, although the subsequent euphoria is reduced a little as a consequence.

Important: if you try cold showers yourself it is vitally important that you remember to reset the shower to hot afterwards. Failure to do so may result in protests from other members of your family!


(1) Browne, J (1995) Charles Darwin: Voyaging, London, Pimlico (New Pimlico Edition, 2003, p496)

On...The Lincolnshire Earthquake (or, a little knowledge can be a disturbing thing when you are half-asleep)

At four minutes to one GMT this morning (27th Feb 2008) I was having an interesting dream about flying in an RAF fighter jet. The take-off had been particularly hairy with the pilot nearly clipping trees and buildings and then pulling some interesting low level manoeuvres. I never found out how the dream ended though as I was awoken by the house shaking. It seemed as though a large fleet of heavy-goods vehicles were driving past about a metre from my bedroom wall in an East-West direction. Now sufficiently awake to remember that my bedroom wall is in fact nowhere near a major road and the shaking was of a different nature to anything produced by lorries I concluded that it must, therefore, be an earthquake. My wife told me I had said it was an earthquake and got to the window before the shaking stopped. As the quake only lasted about ten seconds, brain and body must have been in overdrive.

Now you just don't get earthquakes in Lincolnshire. My sleepy brain continued racing. We are nowhere near a tectonic plate boundary, I remembered, and earthquakes in the middle of plates can be severe. However the shaking had quickly stopped and, although alarming, little damage appeared to have been done. But then from the recesses of my mind I recalled (how accurately I don't know without checking) from an oceanography course I had done that off the coast of Norway there is a large unstable undersea slope which could slump if disturbed by an earthquake, displacing a vast quantity of water and inundating the east coast of Britain.

In a sleepy state we seem to be more prone to projecting our fears onto situations, possibly because of an ancient threat-assessment mechanism evolved to wake us up quickly, analyse the situation and plan action if danger threatens. I spoke to my mother this morning and she said she awoke thinking there was a burglar in her house. I had imagined a tsunami. Fortunately both fears turned out to be unfounded and if we had been awake when the quake occurred we probably would have had different thought processes.

[BBC Breakfast News said the earthquake had a magnitude of 5.2. BBC Look North contradicted them and said it was 5.3, but then they may have just been a little excited at having a national news story happening on their doorstep.]

On... The Cycling Null Point

When cycling one constant is the movement of air.

You are moving through the air as you move over the ground and the air that surrounds you is probably moving too, as a breeze or wind (which if strong almost always seems to be a head-wind rather than a tail-wind for some reason). The relative movements of you and the air mass you are cycling through can sometimes make progress hard work but most of the time the movements are more subtle. You can hear a fairly light breeze as it moves past your ears, your eyes and nose can feel small air movements and your lips more sensitive still (especially if you wet them).

However, just occasionally, it is possible to experience a 'null point' where your movement through the air exactly matches the movement of the air surrounding you relative to the ground. At the null point you are moving but are in (it seems to you) completely still air, and not a trace of breeze can be felt. The sensation is strange and, despite cycling most days, is one that I have very rarely experienced and never for more than for a few seconds.

For a null point to occur, the movement of the wind must exactly match your speed and direction on the cycle, at least within your ability to detect any air movement caused by the difference. Experiments carried out in a closed room show that the face is capable of detecting air movements of less than 10cm per second but as the distractions of the road are likely to reduce sensitivity I will use this figure.

Next I will assume a fairly sedate average cycling speed of 20 kph (about 12.5 miles per hour). 20kph is about 5.5 metres per second. As a wind of 0.1 metres per second is detectable the moving air must be within the range 5.4 to 5.6 metres per second. It must also be blowing directly from behind otherwise there will be some movement across the face which will be detected – I would estimate that a wind within say 10 degrees of directly behind is undetectable.

Lastly, the wind (if there is one, remember absolutely still air will seem like a 20kph breeze on the bicycle) will have to be moving in a uniform direction and not swirling. When air is moving there is, however, usually some swirling or gusting but it is difficult to put a figure on how common this is. Suffice it to say a mass of air moving in a uniform direction and speed without any swirling or gusting for more than a few seconds is unusual. Of those winds that do, only a small percentage of will be in the 'right' direction and only a small fraction of those will be blowing at the 'right' speed. Which explains why the null point is unusual. So if you should happen to experience one then enjoy it while it lasts.

On... The East Coast in Winter

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Most would agree that the best time to visit the coast is in the summer when the sand is warm, the sea is blue and inhibitions are, generally, relaxed. And yes, that can be very pleasant indeed. However, a visit to the East Coast in winter, especially the Lincolnshire coast, will gladden both the heart and the spirit (provided you wrap up warm, as it is difficult to feel at one with nature if you cannot feel your extremities). The landscape has a certain stark beauty to it: mudflats and salt marshes, long beaches perfect for ambling along or flying a kite, coastal defence banks providing views over an expanse of flat landscape and nature reserves with thousands of wading birds. The magnificent skies seem to go on forever and, if the wind drops, a wonderful stillness can permeate the scenery and the mind, a single-pointedness you cannot experience in the hustle and bustle of the crowded and busy summer.

The North Norfolk Coast has its charms too and is great for birdwatching but, facing the northerly winds straight from the Arctic, often bears a striking resemblance to the inside of a Siberian wind tunnel. I have only ever been warm once at Titchwell (even in the summer) and a visit to Snettisham left my hands so cold I was unable to unzip my pocket to get the car keys out. An extra jumper, a Thermos full of hot coffee and plenty of chocolate are therefore recommended.

http://www.lincstrust.org.uk/reserves/gib/

http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/f/freistonshore/index.asp

http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/nature/uk/record/1429

http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/s/snettisham/

http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/t/titchwellmarsh/index.asp